Beijing:
The United States won China’s acknowledgement of U.S. concerns about cyber theft of intellectual property and commitments to limit subsidies to Chinese state-owned firms during high-level talks this week, the U.S. Treasury said on Friday.
Beijing also renewed a pledge to move to a market-determined exchange rate for its currency at the U.S.-China Strategic and Economic Dialogue, where one notable outcome was a decision to restart negotiations on a bilateral investment treaty.
U.S. business leaders welcomed the moves, even as some said they were largely aspirations rather than firm commitments, with some items recycled from earlier rounds of talks.
“Chinese officials acknowledged U.S. concerns over the growing problem of the cyber-enabled theft of trade secrets and business confidential information,” the Treasury Department said in a statement. “China pledged to better protect against trade secret misappropriation through strengthened enforcement.”
Washington has made cyber theft of intellectual property a priority with China as economic losses from theft have mounted.
Previous U.S. efforts to get Beijing to address the issue of hacking into American networks to steal intellectual property had been met with denials, and China has tended to conflate cyber espionage with cyber-enabled trade secret theft, a problem compounded by recent revelations on U.S. spying.